Thursday, October 9, 2008

Transportation Secretary Short List

I'm not sure how accurate these are but it apparently was reported in Congressional Quarterly (Original here. Thanks Morgan):

McCain
- Ma Peters
- Bill Graves, president of the American Trucking Associations
- Pete K. Rahn, Missouri Department of Transportation director

Obama
- Governor Edward G. Rendell (D-PA), chair of National Govenors Association
- Jane F. Garvey, executive vice president, APCO Worldwide
- Steve Heminger, executive director of the San Francisco Bay area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission

Ma Peters. We know all about her. Someone from the American Trucking Association? Serious? Or hows about Pete Rahn, the president of the Highway Lobby! This is stark. YGBFKM!

On the Blue team, it looks much better. Governor Rendell is big on transit in Philadelphia and understands transportation is multi-modal. I'm not so sure how good Jane Garvey would be as she was a former FAA administrator and Deputy Administrator at the Federal Highway Administration (booo!!).

I'm not so sure what I think of Steve Heminger either. His MTC has already been reprimanded by Jerry Brown for keeping roads we know the region doesn't need (Read Eric's post) and he got into trouble by taking a paragraph out of the recent National Transportation Commission Study Report about electric transit that Conservative Paul Weyrich had inserted. He's recently been a HOT lane enthusiast as well.

On the other hand, he understands multi-modal transportation systems, though the Bay Area's hodge podge of 26 agencies makes it a little hard to coordinate. They also have very aggressive performance measures for TOD that only spend money on new projects if the area is willing to accept a certain amount of density. I will say he and Gov. Rendell would be light years better than any of these other highway clowns. The McCain picks are telling, and if you were thinking he would address global warming and go against the auto-oil industrial complex, you might have just gotten smacked in the face.

9 comments:

Morgan Wick said...

Here's CQ Politics' descriptions of the shortlisters.

ambrown said...

EARL EARL EARL!!!

http://blumenauer.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1339&Itemid=175

Justin said...

You forgot the "T" in YGTBFKM.

Pantograph Trolleypole said...

Haha thanks Justin. I think Gotta works as well. :)

Anonymous said...

At least McCain doesnt have Wendell Cox or Randall O'Toole on the list, though someone from the highway or trucking lobby would be almost as bad. McCain's ideas are even older than his old age.

I second the choice of Earl Blumenauer for Obama, although I also would like him to keep doing what he is doing in Portland.

Cap'n Transit said...

Ed Rendell, the one who cut trolley service from three lines in 1992 while he was mayor of Philadelphia and promised to restore it, but never got around to it - and gave the restoration tepid support at best when he was governor? (Service was restored to Route 15 in 2005, but has not yet been restore to routes 23 or 56.)

I don't know, Obama's picks all sound kinda lame to me. I'm sure they'd be better than any of McCain's, but not much of an improvement over, say, Rodney Slater.

Pantograph Trolleypole said...

Thanks Cap'n. I was wondering why something wasn't quite right about the Governor. It seems a bit like my feelings about Heminger. Not quite as good as you want them to be.

Anonymous said...

why not bill richardson?

Pantograph Trolleypole said...

I like that Bill is on the light rail wagon but I wonder how much he really understands about transportation issues. I haven't seen anything to show he gets it other than just saying we need rail. But others might have seen other information to the contrary.